Parts of this were great, but other parts had a feeling of being really low resolution. I don't think the whole "things in space" struck me as awesomely as On from last year. It seemed to lack the finishing polish of On or a "whoa moment" from The Timeless with the city scene and the car lights.

I have to thumb it up for the amount of content in it, and also considering that I thumbed up Conspiracy demo where I had similar misgivings so it would otherwise be a bit hypocritical.

Really good! Fantastic and majestic in many places, but also lost a bit of its wonder in others. This is complaining on a very high level, but apart from the slightly cheesy theme, I think direction lacks a bit at times. And while it left me speechless with regards to visual/technical quality, it didn't evoke the same level of emotions in me as Total Control or Conspiracy's intro did.

Still, this is something I will watch again many times and also can show to others. :)

You guys finally outdid yourselves in every aspect you've been emphasizing before. This is so completely off the chart next to virtually anything else produced by the scene it's not even funny. Technical merit is one thing and this boasts plenty of those, but there is so much more here that makes this special.

Composition. Editing. Proper montage. The sound design. Composition. Framing. Pace. And once more, composition. There's so much in this that transcends the entire demoscene. I have nothing but utmost respect for the attention put into the pacing and editing. If there's one thing that plagues the scene, it's people's inability take their time to express themselves. Needless rapid cuts and unnatural editing tend to be rampant. It's frankly unfathomable to me how well you managed to blend together such a vast array of editing ideas and do it seamlessly and naturally.

I've previously criticized mercury a lot over their extravagant post-processing and poor color grading. Fermi Paradox really is in a league of its own and on a whole another level of maturity in those regards. Every choice done in the post-processing step supports the intention of the editing. I admire how well you managed to restrict yourselves, in many ways even better than many professionals. Of course overall this looks stunning. I'm yet to watch it realtime or in otherwise high quality, but I saw maybe one scene (early on) that didn't exactly sit right with me color-wise. The rest is gorgeous.

There was some talk on IRC about this intro after the compo. Someone mentioned something along the line "conspiracy had people, mercury had spheres" and another person that "conspiracy had a story", implying Fermi Paradox didn't. I think both remarks I heard echoed from multiple people are disappointingly naive. The approach is very different in both intros, yet surprisingly similar. Both use iconography to support the story and hammer in their intention. Both emphasize pacing and framing over ostentation. There is a story in both of them, albeit different ones. Conspiracy says something about humanity and our feelings over other people. Mercury's is about the simultaneous grandeur and brutality of the nature, and how against all obstacles we yearn to reach toward it. Again, re-watches warranted, but Mercury's resonated more with me on a personal level. It takes a lot more to grasp your emotions with just "spheres".

This is polished beyond anything I would've dared to suspect. Timeless looks amateurish next to this, and I'm not even trying to be hyperbolic. Like I commented on the Conspiracy intro, this feels like a new leaf opening. I hope these intros serve as the catalyst for the scene to start paying more attention to the humane and presentational sides of their productions. The boundary has been pushed, and I hope we all take that into consideration in the future when we push ourselves in demomaking. This is the first Mercury production I really, genuinely, love.

Also I feel the more people tend to have to say about a production, the better it is, regardless of whether it's positive or negative things they have to say. There's easily a page or two to write about the actual contents of this intro as well. This is significant.

Space is just such an emotional topic for me and you perfectly managed to capture this feeling of infinity. I love the cinematic look, the colors are perfect and the editing is also reeeally good. Just an awesome release in every aspect!

Fantastic visuals - the simulated camera/lens flaws are really well implemented.
Great art direction, Some of the "shots" are incredibly well put together, my favorite is the one with vertical light beam reflecting in the water - simply beautiful!

This actually had more "magic" moments for me personally than the cns one did, but at the same time it had a lot more moments that broke the illusion for me and took me out of the space (pun intended). Absolutely lovely still though overall; great job boys :)

Also the pale blue dot moment as keito reference was brilliant, partially because I had a feeling it was coming when I just saw "empty" space, and also because I'm a sucker for bringing things full circle like you did with the mercury logo :)

As comparing is days theme, CNS setting was of course more original. However, this left me pretty much speechless. Just look at the "asteroid cam" at about 4 mins, whoah, colours, whoah. Fantastic intro.

This is absolutely wonderful! I won't deny parts of it felt like "Offscreen Colonies: The Remix", but with a completely different take. Totally next-gen, and together with the CNS intro this year, clearly the year of storytelling and cinematography in intro-making. Bravo!

the universe, part HG64K
maybe im just too much of a cinematic noob to get it but for me this is the clear winner of this years 64k showdown.
it gives my belly this tingeling feeling of epic and the waterscene is just SO sweet to look at.
also its like the perfect pendant to last years abstract intro, very cool to see you changing approaches while keeping the hg style.
btw. it feels somehow related to the aarhus prod we saw at TRSAC, was that a 'byproduct' of the design process?

My favorite detail is rocket launch trail with its different stages. This minute detail -- subtle, yet impossible to miss -- nicely introduces a level of obsession about physical correctness that carries through the whole show.

I have to admit that it took a while to unfold its full potential in my brain, but after watching it a couple of times it got better and better and better and...

So it looks like I have to read these books on composition and editing after all. And I need implement that Camera-crane Operator.

The only thing that bothered me were the proportions of the rings and the planet in the scene that imitated "In Saturn's Shadow". Because of the preconception caused by that image, it felt as if the rings were too close and the scene was not right. Not an error, though, just bias.

This was really good, even if the first half didn't really do it for me, specially because I couldn't connect with the first ~3 minutes of the music. Any way, it's visually spectacular and globally amazing :)

This is easily my personal favorite from the competition and while watching the party livestream I was secretly hoping that it would win. Beautifully crafted scenes with a perfectly matching soundtrack and for the most part the camera work is outstanding. Compared to Conspiracy's dem, I find this one slightly more satisfying in terms of length and beauty, and because it is therefore less of a tease. That said, it's impossible for me to like one but not the other production. The hard work that has been poured into both of them is very evident. So contratulations! A well deserved 1st place :)

I especially love the photography of this one. It's a stellar 64k by any means and definitely an evolutionary step in intro making alongside with Conspiracys one. Quite funny that two such different yet alike releases were made at once. Seems like it just had to be. Or did you talk to each other? I'd still prefer the coincidence ;)

Most stuff has already been said - this intro is so well thought out and polished it's not even funny anymore. Finally the great tech that Mercury (and that other group) always have had comes to shine, and marvelously it does.

Only sour point for me is the soundtrack - comparisons to MFX' Universe series have already been drawn, and I must say as a long time fan of that series the music here let me down, both in the harmony and spaciousness (or spacyness) department. But that's only a small nitpick and doesn't take away from the total awesomeness. :)

I find it hard to give any objective words for so many of your prods, and this is no exception... mind blown, as is completely usual. But then, reading Noby's articulate thoughts made me realise he's totally right -- this kicks Timeless's ass.

very good! good direction and camerawork and some nice use of effects - i like the fluid / turbulence thing on the gas giant.

but (oh dear.. here it comes): in my humble view, it doesn't have the magic and mystery needed to make it great.

the first issue is that it's really slow paced - like galactically slow. that's a fine way to make things look epic, particularly on the big screen, but it also leaves nowhere for anything to hide. watching the exe at home it left my mind free to wander - and to start mentally dissecting all the individual scenes while watching them.

and the scenes were too easy to dissect. on each scene i couldn't help but think "ok, so this is just this generator and that generator", "blob particles rendered into a texture for the crators?", "heightmap landscape", "i know that water simulation..", "those lens flare sprites look like a circle with a blob subtracted from it", "i wonder if it's this atmospheric paper or that one", etc.
that's probably a lot to do with the theme (which is to be fair something i'm not a fan of - i didn't really care for beyond either). you're essentially talking about a lot of spheres - no great mystery with those - and a lot of natural effects: landscapes, water, the lighting & atmosphere rendering etc. they're all things that are quite well understood, and lend themselves to very well to generation and realtime rendering - which makes it hard to find the "mystery".

so there's the problem for me. what you have here is a 64k with a lot of different elements, where every element is really really well implemented, but none of them alone seemed new; and it's put together really well but it still added up at most to the sum of its parts, not more.

the conspiracy intro is the perfect foil to this one. it's much lower tech, there's fewer different elements in it, it's technically much simpler - but it adds up to way much more. it keeps your mind moving and focused and leaves you wondering how it was done. even if the answer was "its all fake", you still have to think about it for a bit. :)

note that what i'm complaining about here is the difference between being a really good 64k vs being the greatest ever 64k, not being a good or a bad 64k. clearly this is a really impressive 64k with a ton of great work in it, everything is done very well and put together very well. to the point where complaining about anything is kindof ridiculous. sorry. :)

Very, very impressive!
Amount of work behind and attention to details in unbelievable.

However, I have one _big_ complaint (or actually a wish):
So, you want to tell me, that you create all this nice and rather complex procedural landscapes just to show them for a few seconds from a few camera angles in the almost-slide-show manner ?!
To me, it's a huge waste of potential, as people should be able to enjoy this content to the fullest. I would obviously like to see an interactive version in 64k, but say 128k is also fine ;)

During and after the compo my overwhelming feeling was that it was a bunch of pretty pictures arranged in a rather boring way. And that wasn't alcohol-induced attention deficiency per se, because the Conspiracy entry grabbed my attention from start to finish, despite being pretty slow. Rewatching it back home made me pay attention to the quality of the rendering and the scenes a lot more. Also there's some serious cinematography going on. Besides, the quieter setting made for a much more immersive experience. I guess Mercury outconspiracied Conspiracy. :)

Also, as a space and SF nerd I also have to applaud the references to 2001, the iconic Pale Blue Dot image, and some other classic space imagery. (Minor niggle: there's a scene with a ringed giant where the ring system does not align with the cloud bands. Maybe it's the perspective but it looked unphysical.)

Thats how I found it. It seemed completely clinical and surgical to me. Sure, it might be pretty in places, but the space theme just didn't resonate with me. It seemed to be like a bad porno, pretty, but dull.

We know about the issue (new nvidia glsl compiler bug, again) and we have a workaround, but building a new binary with that fix is not trivial for us at the moment due to reasons... It will be fixed though.

Thanks for the fix, was just trying to watch this again. So god damn epic. I was too blown away to leave a proper comment the first time. Everything about this is perfect, music is amazing, scenes, rendering, cinematography, grading and general presentation. A timeless concept perfectly executed.

That water surface shader is to die for... among all the numerous other amazing-looking things that most other groups only wish they could pull off at all, let alone in 64k. :p

This is a huge step forward in quality of cinematography and storytelling compared to the previous Mercury demos, and I can't emphasize that enough. The Timeless in particular felt like all the great tech was going to waste because the direction was lacking. Here, on the other hand, the result may not be perfect yet, but it's damn close!